


Up The Hill Backwards

by daasgrrl



Category: Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-25
Updated: 2008-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daasgrrl/pseuds/daasgrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But if this were the afterlife, he'd certainly expected it to be a bit more impressive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up The Hill Backwards

**Author's Note:**

> I loved the show, but haven't really been in the fandom. However, when [](http://elynittria.livejournal.com/profile)[**elynittria**](http://elynittria.livejournal.com/) recently shared[](http://elynittria.livejournal.com/78575.html) her interesting theory ([here](http://elynittria.livejournal.com/78575.html)) that _Life On Mars_ was ‘real’, but that _Ashes to Ashes_ only existed in Alex’s mind, it led me to a slightly cracktastic alternative that for some reason decided it wanted to be fic. If nothing else, it was at least fun to write.

Gene opened his eyes and immediately regretted it.

At first glance everything seemed perfectly normal. Daylight streamed in through the tiny uncurtained windows of his cluttered bedroom, the upstairs flat in Battersea Park he'd called home since his move to London. Normal. Pain throbbed in his temples, rippling in waves around his head the way it so often did the morning after a really good night before. Also normal. He felt like utter shit. He wanted someone to miraculously appear and bring him a hot cuppa. He needed to take a piss. All perfectly normal.

However, what was _unusual_ was that he hadn’t actually had a drink anytime in the past twelve hours. What was _really_ unusual was the way the pain seemed to be radiating outwards from a sharp point somewhere just over his left eye, and yet when he ran a hand across his face, it came away with no traces of blood, dried or otherwise. What was _really fucking unusual_ were the things he remembered with perfect clarity: Layton pointing the gun at him, the way his head had snapped around on his shoulders when the bullet had hit him, the endless fall into darkness. In a boat. On the Thames. Which was, he was quite certain, a fair distance away from his bedroom.

He shut his eyes and opened them again, but it didn't help. Everything was just as he'd left it: the clock radio next to the bed, the ties draped over the back of a chair, the dust on the dresser. Empty cans of brew from the week before, cigarette butts flowing out of one of them. He seemed to be wearing a vest and Y-fronts, neither of them stained with anything more than food remains. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe he'd been on such a bender he'd not remembered a thing about it. Or, just maybe, he was going the slightest bit mad.

He smiled at the thought, despite himself. This whole business of imagining stuff out of nowhere wasn't his bag at all, it was Sam's. A few years, a few beers, and he'd extracted the whole story piece by piece like a broken tooth - the coma, the hospital, the girlfriend, the radio, the test card girl come to life. It sounded exactly like someone's idea of the biggest and best practical joke ever played, except that Sam clearly believed in all of it. Even years later, Sam still occasionally went off on some rant or other about something that wasn't done 'where he came from'. Around the station, ‘Hyde’ had become almost synonymous with ‘Bedlam’.

A situation like this would have been Gene's conclusive proof that insanity was, in fact, contagious, and he could see Sam getting a right laugh out of it when he told him. Except, of course, that Sam wasn't available to discuss much of anything nowadays. That thought made the smile disappear as quickly as it had come.

They’d talked about many things while Sam was still alive, but the things that haunted him still were the things they hadn't talked about. Gene's divorce, for example; they'd never gone into that, not really. Sure, there had been the predictable sympathy, the offers of a place to stay, the endless supply of alcohol, but they had never talked about the _why_. Partly because neither of them really wanted to know. Afterwards, despite all the time they spent together, nothing had ever happened. Gene had shagged a bird here and there; Sam had _dated_ ; and if neither of them ever quite managed to find the right woman, there was nothing in that. There were some questions that he just didn’t need to know the answers to, or so it had seemed at the time. And now that Sam was gone, the questions were all meaningless, anyway.

Having reached this foregone conclusion once again, Gene put a stop to that train of thought and proceeded to drag himself out of bed and into the bathroom. After taking care of business, he studied himself in the mirror, twisting his head around as best he could to take in all angles. No blood, no sign of injury, nothing but the same good-looking bastard he'd always been. He waited for something interesting to happen: a flicker in the corner of his eye, for the walls to start closing in, a guest appearance by Angela Rippon, perhaps; but nothing did. It was a fine, cold spring morning and he was extremely late for work. Or quite possibly, just _late_. But if this were the afterlife, he'd certainly expected it to be a bit more impressive. He was more than familiar with death, but had never contemplated his own in quite this way. Annie would have had the right words for his current situation, possibly, although he suspected that they might have included the term _delusional_.

It had been after Sam’s death that he first found himself spending a lot of time with her. Nothing official, mind, just a chat now and then with someone else who'd… who'd known Sam better than most. He'd learned a lot of new and fancy words from her, all that stuff they must have taught her at university, but mostly she'd just listened to him talk. She was good at that kind of thing. Nice to look at, too, but she was Mrs Annie McCarthy now, and a mother of two. The thing she'd had with Sam had never really taken off. Anyway, after all was done and dusted they’d decided the best thing would be for him to put in for a London transfer, and ask the lads if they wanted to go along with him. It would keep him busy, and there would be fewer memories to deal with there. And it had worked, for a little while. London was the big cheese, and he'd had a hectic few months adjusting to all the airs and graces around him, but under the surface it was really just more of the same. Scum with a posher accent.

And so in the last couple of months he’d begun having trouble sleeping again, and drinking more, and this time Annie wasn't around to talk to. Ringing her would have cost a small fortune, BT being what it was, and she was probably busy anyway. Getting on with her life. The way he was trying to. It didn’t affect his work in the slightest; he could do the job in his sleep, and very often had done, but he could feel Ray and Chris giving him those looks again, tiptoeing around him the same way they'd done last year at around this very time. They'd never found a body; that had been the worst of it, not really getting to say goodbye. Leaving town had been a relief, but at the same time it felt almost like running away.

The throbbing in his head had died down to a dull ache now, and he headed to the kitchen for a cup of tea. Sam was sitting at the rickety folding table, looking just as he had the last time Gene had seen him: old leather jacket, new lilac shirt, and those ridiculous white _trainers_ \- training for _what_ , Gene had wanted to know - he'd bought just a month ago. Before, that is. Gene checked his stride so quickly he almost fell over. He shook his head to clear it, and blinked slowly. Open, close, open. It didn't help.

“You look like shite,” Sam told him, matter-of-factly.

“Tea,” Gene reminded himself out loud. Kettle, water, mug. Teabag. He watched the kettle heat in silence, giving it his total concentration, even though there was nothing much to see. When he'd finally poured over the boiling water, he turned back to the table, only two steps away in the tiny space. He was certainly a persistent son-of-a-hallucination, Gene had to admit. Slowly, he sat himself down in the empty chair across from Sam, mug in hand.

“If you want one, you can make it yourself,” he grunted, before taking a scalding sip. He realised then that he'd completely forgotten the milk, but damned if he'd let it matter at this stage.

“No, thank you.” Still the same excessively polite bastard.

They sat there in silence. It was just as well that he didn’t feel quite up to touching Sam to see if he were real. Otherwise he might have throttled him.

“You had better really be dead,” Gene said after a few more contemplative sips. “Or I'm going to have some serious questions.”

“As a doornail,” Sam said cheerfully. “How about you?”

“Dead? Am I?”

“I dunno. _Are_ you?”

“It's way too early for this.” Gene scowled into his tea, then got up again. He dumped the teabag in the sink along with the others, then opened the fridge to correct the milk situation.

“Actually, it's after four. You know, _PM_?” Sam tapped meaningfully at his watch, which was all chunky black plastic. “Hadn’t you better go make an appearance at the station?”

“Not if I'm dead.” Gene sat back down. His head had started aching again. “Or if I've gone completely and utterly mental. Is this what being you is like? Was like. Whichever.”

“No, actually. I'm a _lot_ tidier.”

Gene shook his head, but he couldn't help smiling. In afterlife terms, things were at least looking up. In fact, despite the headache, he suddenly felt brighter than he had in months. His tea tasted a lot better, too.

“’s good to see you, I suppose.”

“Wish I could say the same,” Sam said, but his mouth curled up at the corners, and his eyes gave him away, as they’d always done.

“So, are you here to tell me what this is about?” Gene demanded at last. “Because last thing I remember, I'd managed to chase the bastard all the way down onto that bloody boat, and then he turns around and _shoots_ me without so much as a by-your-leave. Next thing I know, I'm waking up back home in my own bed all safe and sound and cosy-like. Not that I'm complaining, exactly, but I'd really like to know where this is all going.”

“Maybe that all depends on your backup.”

“Excuse me?”

“You did _tell_ someone what you were up to? Ray? Chris? So someone will be able to find you before it’s too late?”

“There wasn't time.”

“You mean, you didn't bother.” Typical Sam; even after emerging from the grave he couldn't stop having a dig.

“There wasn't _time_.”

“Right.”

“Don't look at me like that. This isn't about _you_ , Tyler. Not everything’s about…”

But Sam was gone. Dust motes drifted in the sunlight where he had just been.

Sam was right, of course; it was - had been - one of the most annoying things about him. Over the past couple of months Gene had gotten… well, not _careless_ exactly. Not careless. Just… not especially careful, either. Because sometimes he got up in the mornings and didn't know why he was doing this any more. It wasn't enough getting the dirt off the streets; nowadays all the bloody lawyers about just ensured it came right back the following week, thicker and filthier than ever. Chris and Ray were great lads, but they could do the same job for anyone. He wasn't the same force of nature he had once been, because there was no longer anything he needed to prove. Nobody to prove it to.

It was all starting to fall into place, though. Seeing Sam had only confirmed his suspicions. So it was likely the shooting had been real, after all, and now he was hovering somewhere between… life and death? It all sounded a bit too familiar, not to mention completely bonkers. He would have lodged a protest if he'd had any idea who to address it to. If his hallucinations were to be believed, his life was hanging in the balance, and of course he wanted to live… didn't he?

He pondered the question as he showered and shaved on autopilot, radio murmuring away in the background. It was still not entirely clear what was going on. So he should just… pop into work as usual and see what happened, and trust that he could work out what the point of it all was later? That was what Sam had done, reportedly, and it had worked out for him. Sort of. He wiped the last traces of lather from his face with a towel, and a snatch of music caught his attention just before he snapped the radio off, a chorus of warbling women.

_I’ve got to love somebody today  
I’ve got to love somebody - soon_

The tune echoed itself irritatingly in his head as he dressed. Apparently his subconscious could be _exactly_ that pitiful. Well, if that was what it was going to take to claw his way back to life, he might as well be dressed for it. He put on his dark grey suit and a matching shirt, and plucked the grey-and-red striped tie from off the back of the chair. The snakeskin boots and overcoat were a given.

_Well, and what exactly_ would _it take, then?_ he wondered. He'd not given it any thought at all, not since Sam, anyway. He wondered what Annie would have suggested. A bird, of course, would be much easier for him and his delicate _psyche_ to deal with all round. Someone dark-haired and dark-eyed like Annie, perhaps, yet also a little on the angular side, like Sam. Smart, with Sam's uncanny-and-possibly-futuristic knack for policing; maybe even with one of those fancy psychology degrees like Annie, so she’d have half a chance at understanding what was going on with him. And because this was going to be his _fantasy construct_ , as Annie would have put it, a nicely rounded pair up top, and legs that went on forever. Brain of a DI, body of a tart. Perfect. That still didn't mean it would work out, though. Maybe even if such a personage were to grace his non-existence she'd hate him on sight and it would all start to look too much like hard work.

Still, anything was better than sitting at home waiting to find out if he was going to live or die. Gene shut the downstairs front door with a bang, jangling the car keys in his hand as he got behind the wheel. The call about the hostage situation came in just as he rounded the last bend towards the station, and the fact that the reported location was only a stone's throw away from his last clear recollection came as no surprise at all. Ray and Chris were already standing out front as he pulled up; no time to take questions about where the hell he’d been.

Right then; off to his date with destiny. As he screeched away from the kerb, radio blaring at full volume, it occurred to him that the one thing he hadn't thought of for his potential bridge to reality was a name. Best would be something short and simple, not too girly. Billie, maybe, or Jackie. Nicky. Alex. It didn’t really matter, he supposed. Just so long as she understood her place in his world.

_It's got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it_   
_It's got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it_   
_Up the hill backwards_   
_It'll be all right_

***

[Lyrics: Sister Sledge - _Got To Love Somebody_ (UK #34, 1980)  
            David Bowie - _Up The Hill Backwards_ (UK #32, 1981)]


End file.
